Other VanOrden Posts

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

I started blogging for fun about two years ago. I just began writing on whatever topic seemed
of interest to me on any given day. Then
over time I began to focus in on themes such as weight loss, since I was trying
to lose 80 pounds and matters of faith because I was a lay leader in a
religious congregation. I signed up for
two online courses about how to build your presence on the internet mostly because
my oldest son was making a living doing so to the tune of six figures. I was about to retire and thought “what the
heck” may as well try it to supplement my retirement income.

Here’s some of what I learned:

Internet business is fueled by the number of people who come
to your website. The term used by
internet entrepreneurs is “traffic”. The
more traffic you get to your site the better.
Advertisers pay you by the number of clicks on their ad. The number of sales you are able to secure is
mathematically predictable by the number of visitors to your site. Internet traffic is the magic that makes
money flow in cyberspace.

The first thing a new online business or individual needs is
a website or blog-site. Neither is particularly
difficult to establish if you know where to go on the world-wide-web. I used Blogger for my first website. You can get a free blog at “Blogger” by going
to https://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g.

If you wish to start right off with a website you can use
WordPress at http://wordpress.org/. Don’t be overwhelmed with the process, just
be methodical and it all will make sense, especially if you check your site
regularly.

An important hint is to keep track of passwords. If you begin to have too many to deal with
you can use a password memory program such as RoboForm. Don’t worry about what to write, just start
writing about whatever is on your mind. You will find a niche as you get better
at writing and using the programs.

Link your blog posts to your Facebook and Twitter
accounts. You can track the number of “reads”
your blog gets overall by putting a tracker on your site. If you wish to know
which posts get read the most you can do so on your Blogger stats by clicking
on “design” in the upper right hand corner of your blog and then click stats on
the list that pops up to the left hand side of the next page.

After two years and 130 blog posts I am approaching 14,000
reads. It begins to grow exponentially
as you improve your skills and consistency.
Doubling retirement income is not really hard if you persist and know
some of the tools used by successful online entrepreneurs. Give it a shot and
you will probably fall in love with the power of the internet while the $$$$
begin to flow.

If you would like a look at more detail of how to
grow traffic at your website or blog, sign up for my secure email group to the
left of this post. I will always respect
your email privacy by not giving your address to anyone else.

I had a
disappointing week on the golf course. I
was on the verge of giving it all up.
After a solitary moment of despair on the seventh hole, I had an
epiphany. My
venture into the game of golf is not about becoming competent enough not to
embarrass myself. It is the symbolic
quest of never giving up, of challenging myself to continue to learn and grow
at a time in my life when I could easily say, “I’ve done enough, I’ve worked
hard enough, I’ve had enough of pushing myself.”

Golfing is a
handy reminder that, as in life, if you are standing still you are falling
behind. That is not to say I am going to
be a perfectionist who drives herself mercilessly ( I have plenty of experience
with that.) I have grown up enough to
relax on the subject of excellence. Ideals have their place, but reality is
unrelenting.

However, if I don’t keep my sights on some stars and
reach for them, it is easy to let my body and brain slump into disrepair. (I am far too fond of sleeping in.)

In my golf
game, each time I think I’ve found the secret mechanical tweak that would end
all my embarrassing flubs, I find a new variation of the old flub. Each improvement seems to change everything, and
everything then needs to be adjusted to fit.
Maddening or tantalizing. I will choose
the latter.

The next logical
epiphany: I will stop yearning for a
space and time when I will eliminate my embarrassing lack of mastery. I will embrace my deficits and know that I am
not sinking but rising to the occasion.

The next
occasion will be at a women’s golf event I have signed up for. That irritant will motivate me to get up and
do my swing drills. I am very
uncomfortable about exposing my weaknesses so publicly but I have a week to
prepare and, meanwhile, my discomfort will keep me moving.

Monday, April 15, 2013

We
recently visited our oldest son Jason, his wife Melanie and one of our
beautiful grandchildren named Calliope or CeCe for short. It was
especially fun since CeCe started walking while we were there. About two
months ago they moved into a very nice three level condominium in Portland
Oregon. It provides nicely for all the room they need with modern
amenities, not common in Portland, plus a huge office so Jason can set up his
at-home online business and a video studio.

Jason has
worked from home and owned an internet business for seven years. He has
become a celebrity on the online business media lecture-tour teaching people how to use
internet resources to generate income. In addition to his online money,
he earns thousands of dollars from consultation fees helping people learn how
to maximize their online entrepreneurial success. Thus I relish
every opportunity to pick his brain about online commerce.

Here
is the bottom line: Jason suggests the time has come for me to be
more open about the process by which I earn money on the internet, so here’s
goes.

Several
years ago I started to dabble in the use of online media to communicate. My group of friends on Facebook grew to over
2800 before I realized it was becoming unmanageable. My private email
group grew to over 100.

Last
August I retired from my career of 34 years as an educator and moved out of
Alaska to be closer to our children and grand-children. My business
motivation suffered because of the enormous change in our lives. I wasn’t
writing or researching as much. But my internet media presence had taken
on a life of its own. After not even posting updates for months, I
checked my blog to discover it was being accessed by about a 100 people every
week. I was shocked but pleased, and felt an responsibility to provide new content.

So here
is some detail on what I have learned and earned from internet business over
the past two years. My earnings come from multiple sources: advertizing,
direct distribution of my own copyrighted material, payments from affiliates, and
investments growth. During my first year of online business I took
in just over $700. In the last 8 months since I retired and have a bit more time to dabble online, I have computer based supplemental earnings over $30,000.

My goal
has been to double my peak retirement income which will come from a
pension, an annuity, transition pay which kicked in since I retired before I
was 65, investment income from our savings during employment, and eventually
Social Security. I am trying to be a bit coy here since I don’t want to
share exactly what money I have for retirement, but needless to say, I will
need to double my online income from my last eight months.

The first
steps to becoming and online entrepreneur are: 1) learn how to blog, podcast
and/or video cast online, 2) start a blog and post your own content 2-3 times a
week, 3) start using a simple financial tracking program to
monitor your progress, I use Mint.com. My next several posts will give a step by step
overview of how I became an internet entrepreneur earning a supplemental
retirement income by following these steps.

Monday, April 1, 2013

It is
video of our first fruit tree being planted on our property in Idaho.
Keep in mind that we are amateur organic gardeners not experts, though we have
grown successful gardens for about 35 years. We would love to hear comments
that may improve our efforts to be productive on breezy mountainside land in a
warm climate.